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A New Jerusalem Consulate for the Palestinians Will Again Proclaim: Jerusalem Is Not in Israel

(Newsweek) Nathan Lewin and Alyza D. Lewin - The Biden administration's intent to open a U.S. consulate-general in Jerusalem for the Palestinians is not a minor administrative change. It is nothing less than a devious scheme to reverse U.S. recognition that Jerusalem is in Israel, pressuring Israel to abandon its claim to sovereignty over its own capital city. For 70 years, the U.S. refused to formally recognize the City of Jerusalem as being in the State of Israel. It took us 18 years of pro bono litigation, with two appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court, to overturn the State Department's position that treated as stateless thousands of American citizens born in Jerusalem. We represented Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky soon after he was born in Jerusalem when his American-born parents sought for him what most people take for granted - the right to list his country of birth on his American identity papers. His U.S. passport listed "Jerusalem" instead of "Israel" as his country of birth, as if the City of Jerusalem was not actually in any country. Congress had overwhelmingly endorsed Israel's assertion of sovereign jurisdiction over Jerusalem in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. In May 2018, the U.S. embassy was relocated from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, rendering the Jerusalem consulate superfluous. In October 2020 the State Department finally changed its passport policy to allow American citizens born in Jerusalem the right to list "Israel" as their country of birth. If the Biden administration converts any location in Jerusalem into a de facto embassy to the Palestinian Authority, this is denying Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem, resurrecting a dangerous fabrication that was buried three years ago.
2021-10-18 00:00:00
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